Being more valuable than Doug Jarvis doesn't equal being a Hall of Famer or All-Star.

You do realize you compared the 18th man on an NHL team to the 5th man on an NBA team, right?

I understand that guys are able to become first liners. It's like how Steve Nash went from a backup point guard to 2-time MVP. Doesn't mean Gilmour or Nash could make it to an AS team while they were in the fourth line or backup PG spots. They had to move up to a more prominent role.

But no matter how difficult it is to get AS votes in hockey, Ramsay and Roenick got them frequently. Carbonneau didn't. Ever. Not once. I guess competition with the likes of Tom Fergus, Perry Berezan, and random 18th man AHL call-ups was too much for him. Roenick and Ramsay have a ton of these super-rare NHL AS votes though.

Ramsay finished 2nd in Selke voting 3 times before he won once, with the win coming after Luce left and was about as valuable that year as Carbonneau was when he won his 3rd Selke. After Luce left he dropped from 59 to 51 points before being injured, and even then he kept picking up Selke votes. He no longer showed up in AS voting but that's not a disadvantage when compared to Carbonneau who never got a single vote.

Ramsay suffered from stronger Selke competition in Bob Gainey, much like people say Yzerman lost out for coming along when Gretzky and Lemieux were peaking. Ramsay lost more Selkes because he was playing while Gainey was peaking than Yzerman did Hart Trophies. (That should impress the Wings contingent on here.) That cost him the chance to win a Selke as a 71-point guy, which would probably place him above Carbonneau's peak.

So Carbonneau should benefit from lower expectations? Because it seems like you said we should judge Roenick against top-line centres and Carbonneau against 3rd-liners. We shouldn't be so impressed by how Carbonneau excelled in his niche that we start pretending that the 3rd liner is better than the first liner, or ascribe some mythical value to his goal prevention that doesn't seem to be supported by evidence. Gretzky's scoring stayed the same. The other Kings dropped off. (That 93 team could have used a Joe Nieuwendyk or Vincent Damphousse to be their Goring/Messier. Maybe even Jeremy Roenick...)

Carbonneau also had his weaknesses. Forwards are expected to produce offense, and even among the Selke-winners he's a middling offensive player. He's nowhere near as good as a Bobby Clarke or Sergei Fedorov. Adjusting for era, a peak Selke-calibre Carbonneau is about as valuable as a peak Selke-calibre Mike Peca.

If you put Carbonneau out there for 21 minutes a game, you'd be much more disappointed than you would be with Roenick, a good two-way player who actually was one of the top 10 centres in the game in many seasons (perhaps even top 5 at his peak), and got a few Hart, Selke, and post-season AS votes along the way. You may dislike his personality, but as you explicitly said personality was irrelevant with Bobby Jones, I don't know why you'd care.

In short, a team has a much better shot at a Stanley Cup if Jeremy Roenick is their best centre than if Guy Carbonneau is their best centre.

You are drifting into mischaracterizations of what was posted by me. Carbonneau being preferred to Jarvis was not value driven but a recognition that the potential of Guy Carbonneau was much greater than the established prime best of Doug Jarvis. Factor in that Carbonneau was a RHS while Jarvis was a LHS and the choice is easy to understand.

The NBA/NHL comparison was bottom three to bottom three. If in your perception that becomes 5th to 18th so be it.

Roenick's teams went to one SC final and were quickly dispatched by the Penguins since they had no one to play the defensive center role against Mario Lemieux.

Your final assertion is not supported by history or results. Recently, the Bruins with Patrice Bergeron shut down Crosby and Malkin. Toews has more SCs than Crosby and Malkin, Datsyuk has more SCs than the Sedin twins combined. Historically, Keon has more SCs than Phil Esposito, Ted Kennedy has five, more than Ullman and Mikita who have one between them yet were well above average defensively. Henri Richard an elite defensive center has the most SCs of all 11 yet he was never the #1 center on the Canadiens unless Beliveau was injured. He didn't have to be. All he had to do was be better than the center he was facing - B.Hull in 1959, Mikita, Esposito, Ullman, Clarke and others which he did more often than not, 11 times in a 20 season career. Teams hardly win with Roenick type centers alone.Lemieux needed Francis, Gretzky never won a SC when he lacked excellent defensive forwards.

Carbonneau managed to shutdown or reduce the effectiveness of the opposing #1 center. This was his role, it was not his role to be the #1 center and avoid being shut down. Your attempted point is like positing that a screw driver is a bad hammer so it should not be recognized as a necessary piece of construction equipment. Failing to recognize that certain screwdrivers are much better than others and deserve recognition as great construction tools.